


man's best friend

by ArsenicInYourPudding



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, idk man this is just pure fluff tbh, jack gets a dog, jack is a man who needs a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 10:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6420139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicInYourPudding/pseuds/ArsenicInYourPudding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there is no home that isn't immediately improved by the presence of a dog</p>
            </blockquote>





	man's best friend

**Author's Note:**

> lol so after careful consideration, i came to the conclusion that my last fic for this fandom was...maybe a little heavy for you guys?? so, um. in the interest of balancing out the universe again, dogs!! 
> 
> bernese mountain dogs are awesome, you guys. they're super chill and intelligent and happy, they're like golden retrievers who have no idea how huge they really are. jack would really enjoy having one, i think.

Jack had been wary of the concept of a dog. Not, you understand, because he wasn't a dog person, or because he didn't think he was capable of caring for one, but because of the way it had been brought up - Shitty said it might make him feel better living alone, Eric agreed, and Holster emailed him within two hours with break-downs of breed characteristics. Jack had a-- a _thing,_ a mental block if you will, about making it work with what he had, and supplementing his life to make it less lonely went against that in a big way. He could handle his life the way it was. That was the point - that was what he was trying to prove to himself.

"I just get a little worried about you," Eric said on the phone one evening, "all by your lonesome up there. A dog might make living alone easier." 

"I'm fine," Jack answered, and didn't think about how much the unfamiliar quiet unnerved him some nights. It wasn't anything he needed to  _solve_ , only get used to. 

Only, he made the mistake of mentioning it to his teammates, who thought it was a fantastic idea. Between Eric, Shitty, and the Falconer's goalie, Jack spent a month getting dragged to meet with breeders for everything from labradoodles (too ridiculous) to pit bulls (sweet dogs, but he wasn't sure of the media response) to golden retrievers (maybe a little stereotypical for an athlete, and probably wouldn't handle being alone well). Truth be told, he wasn’t sure about a _puppy_ in general, and his life was already a media circus, why drag an innocent animal into that as it was, much less to make it worse.

So really, he couldn’t exactly say why he swung into the local humane society on a rare day off, or why he told the girl working the front counter that he was tentatively interested in adopting a dog. He just had it on the brain, and let his mouth get away from him. He wasn’t _actually_ interested. But regardless of his motivations, she smiled and pointed him back down a long concrete hallway lined with kennels. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wandered, resolving to take a lap and make his excuses before leaving empty handed.

Halfway down the row of kennels, Jack paused to check his phone - just an email from the athletic trainer, nothing Jack hadn’t heard a thousand times from a thousand different trainers - and a low whine caught his attention.

The dog was pushed up against the bars of the kennel, stretched out nearly from one wall to the other. Jack lowered himself into a squat and threaded his fingers through the bars to scratch the massive dog behind the ears. “Well hi there,” he said softly, glancing up at the laminated _Meet Me!_ sign ziptied to the bars. _My name is: Beau_ , the sign read, the first three words in Comic Sans before the name, handwritten in black dry-erase marker. “Beau,” Jack said, and the dog’s ears perked up.

The sign said he was a Bernese Mountain Dog, and distantly Jack remembered the list of breeds Holster had sent him. They were supposed to be easy-going and intelligent - one of the breeds Jack had narrowed his own private preferences down to before everyone else got involved playing matchmaker. He scrubbed Beau’s neck with his fingertips, studying the sign over his head absently.

“He’s a sweetheart, isn’t he,” someone said, and Jack just barely managed to not jump out of his skin. When he turned, the girl from the counter was smiling at him, holding a small dog with shaggy off-white fur under her arm. He noticed the nametag on her shirt said Molly. “You wanna take him out?”

“Oh, I--”

“There’s a dog run out back,” she continued. “It’s sort of like a test-drive - good way for people interested in adopting to see if they mesh well with a particular dog’s personality or energy level. But you don’t have to, and it’s no obligation if you do.”

Beau made a sound in his throat and nudged insistently into the bars when Jack stopped scratching behind his ears. “I guess I have time,” he said awkwardly.

She grinned. “Let me put Pogo here down really quick.” She took off down the hall and left Jack to slowly roll back to his feet, feeling a little foolish. Beau followed suit, looking affronted that Jack had stopped petting him.

Molly came back a minute later with an intimidating harness and a retractable leash. “Alright buddy,” she said, unlocking the kennel door with a key from the ring on her hip and ducking inside. “You’re gonna be good today, right?” Beau shoved at her shoulder with his nose, and she laughed, hooking the harness around his front legs. She ducked out of the kennel, taking Beau with her, and handed the leash to Jack. “Just be careful at first, he gets a little excited sometimes and, well. He’s a big dog.”

Jack’s fingers clenched around the handle of the leash, and the girl led the way out to the dog run. It looked like an artfully landscaped urban backyard, with an agility course in the center surrounded by a series of looping pathways. They took two laps around the inside of the fence, chatting idly about Jack’s living situation and Beau’s temperament. He was only a year old, Jack learned, and had been at the humane society for three months after his previous owners moved and couldn’t take him along. “They were sad to see him go,” Molly told him, “so at least there wasn’t like, abuse or behavioral issues. He’s just a big dog - they tend to be less adoptable, especially in the city.”

After five minutes, a boy with braces in his early teens called Molly inside to help someone fill out adoption paperwork, and Molly left him with Beau and instructions to “holler if he needed anything.” Jack took another lap around the dog run, Beau trotting at his side, before settling down on a bench to wait. Beau settled his head on Jack’s knee with a pointed glance upward, nudging at Jack’s hands when he didn’t move fast enough.

“Pushy, aren’t you,” Jack chuckled, flopping Beau’s ears around. He stroked his hands over Beau’s face and scratched behind his ears.

Before he knew it, Molly was walking back across the dog run toward him, grinning. Jack checked his watch - he’d been out here with Beau for close to 20 minutes. “You two seem to be getting along well,” she noted happily.

“Yeah. I, um.” He looked down at Beau, who looked back with a distinct _who, me?_ expression. “What’s your adoption fee look like?”

* * *

Eric stomped the snow off his boots and slid his key into the lock, shifting his bag of groceries on his hip. The walk had been longer than he’d anticipated - Jack normally met him at the train station, and the last time Eric had walked, it hadn’t been through two inches of accumulating snow or with groceries, but his boots were waterproof and his coat was much warmer than the one he’d spent his first New England winter in, so he wasn’t in too bad of shape by the time he made it to Jack’s front door.

He opened the door cautiously, expecting to be body checked by a hundred pounds of enthusiastic dog. But the house was quiet, and Eric paused, listening for sounds of life as he set his groceries down and pulled his coat and boots off in the entry way. There was a light on in the living room, which likely meant that Jack was home - he never failed to turn off the light when he left a room. He gathered his groceries again and left them in the kitchen before padding into the living room to investigate.

Jack was laying on the couch, Beau laying stretched out on top of him, head resting on Jack’s chest. They appeared to be having some sort of telepathic conversation, staring silently into each other’s eyes as Jack stroked the fur behind Beau’s ear. Quietly, Eric made his way across the living room, smiling as Jack’s eyes darted toward him. “We’re having a moment,” Jack explained solemnly.

“I can see that,” Eric said, scratching the top of Beau’s head as he leaned down to press his lips to Jack’s forehead. “I saw the final score on my phone. Congratulations.”

Jack moved his hand from Beau’s ears to slide around the back of Eric’s neck to pull him down into a proper kiss. “I recorded the game, if you wanna watch it.”

“Maybe tomorrow. That seems rude, making y’all watch game tape less than an hour after the game’s over. How much shit did the guys give you for comin’ home early?”

“Not a lot,” Jack said, looking oddly sheepish. “I strained my shoulder a little bit, the trainers told me to go home and ice it. You don’t argue with Piper about that kind of thing, honestly.”

“ _Did_ you ice it?”

“A little bit,” Jack said, in a way that suggested that he hadn’t as much as he should’ve.

“You just came home and let the dog lay on you, didn’t you?” Eric sighed, pushing Jack’s hair back. “What am I gonna do with you? Beau, c’mere baby.”

Beau pushed himself up on Jack’s chest and scrambled off the couch, kicking Jack in the stomach in the process. Jack curled away into the back of the couch, groaning and laughing as Beau trotted after Eric into the kitchen. “I see how it is,” he called after the dog, levering himself up into a sitting position. “No loyalty.”

Eric dug around in the grocery bag and found a dog bone he’d bought. “He’s got taste,” Eric called back, tearing the packaging off and holding the bone out to Beau at his hip. “There you go, honey.”

“He does have good taste,” Jack said, winding his arms around Eric’s stomach. He pressed his lips against the curve of Eric’s neck, taking a deep breath against his collar. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Eric grinned, turning and winding his arms around Jack’s neck. “I missed you.”

Jack pressed a slow, gentle kiss to Eric’s mouth, loose and pliant in the absence of post-game adrenaline. Eric braced his lower back against the edge of the counter and pulled Jack into him, wrapping his forearm around the back of his neck to pull his mouth down to a better angle. “You don’t have your backpack,” Jack mumbled against his mouth, his hands solid on Eric’s sides.

“I’ve got no interest in doing homework this weekend,” Eric answered, and chased after Jack’s mouth before he could respond. “That’s what Sunday night’s for.”

Jack pressed into him, his hands straying toward Eric’s stomach. Something nudged insistently between their hips, and Eric broke away to look down at Beau nosing in between them. “Really,” Jack asked flatly, his lips tipping up in an exasperated smile.

“Oh, no one loves you, huh, baby,” Eric cooed, releasing Jack to mess with Beau’s ears. “Y’all’re just _so_ neglected, aren’t you? How do you _live_.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack grumbled, smiling. He moved over to the counter and began unloading groceries from the paper bag. “I _have_ butter, Eric. You don’t have to buy it every time you come up.”

“You have _low-fat butter substitute_ ,” Eric replied archly, still bent over Beau’s head, “which is an abomination. ‘Sides, I have intentions for that butter, and I didn’t want to clean out your fridge.”

“I can live for a day or two without butter,” Jack argued. “It’s not an essential food group.”

Eric gasped theatrically and pressed a hand to his chest. “Are y’all hearin’ this,” he asked Beau in mock outrage. “I don’t know if I can love a man with such _wrong_ opinions.”

Jack laughed from where he was putting perishables in the fridge and padded back across the kitchen to wrap his arms around Eric’s waist, pulling him back away from the dog. “You’ve gotten past worse, I think.”

“What could possibly be worse than your lack of respect for _butter_?”

“My job,” Jack said, his grin tempering as Eric braced his hands against Jack’s biceps, looking up at him. “My anxiety. The distance. Other things.”

Eric sighed, fond and a little sad, and leaned up to kiss him again. “You know, I feel much better about a lot of those things now that y’all have Beau.”

At the sound of his name, Beau bumped his nose against Jack’s hip. Jack smiled and let one hand drop away from Eric’s waist to scratch behind his ears. “I would have to agree.”

 


End file.
